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Thomas Gottschalk

German television host and entertainer

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJun 20, 2026
Entity authoritySource title only
Source-derived summary

Thomas Johannes Gottschalk is a German radio and television host and entertainer. He is best known for hosting Wetten, dass..?, for many years Europe's biggest television show, which he steered to huge success in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and South Tyrol between 1987 and 2023. Until 2015, he was also the brand ambassador in television advertisements for Haribo confectionery.

Editorial summary

“Thomas Gottschalk” enters the record as german television host and entertainer. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Thomas, Gottschalk and German can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewBest approached as a cultural-object dossier: authorship and date matter, but circulation and reception often explain the wider significance. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1987, 2023, 2015—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Thomas, Gottschalk and German.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Thomas Gottschalk” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Thomas, Gottschalk and German provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 20, 2026. The first chronological checks are 1987, 2023 and 2015.

Critical limits

Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Thomas Gottschalk”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Thomas Gottschalk primary sources, Thomas Gottschalk archive and Thomas research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Thomas Gottschalk”?
  2. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
  3. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Thomas Gottschalk” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.